Crescendo
by Phantasque
Summary: [AU] She was never a romantic, years of being shuffled around from foster homes did that to her. Intelligent and realistic, her life is turned upside down upon meeting [and cussing out] her new teacher, Uchiha Itachi. [ItaSaku]


**Crescendo**

prologue: welcome to the life

* * *

My life ended when I was nine. 

Or, at least, my old self. The little girl with big green eyes and petal-pink hair. You know? Everyone was a girl like that in some point of their lives.

The girl that came to school with a smile (because it'll take some learning before she'd realize that school was _boring_), the girl with a ribbon messily tied in her hair. The girl who preferred dresses over pants, who believed in Santa for the sake of believing and held steadfast to the myth that guys had cooties because that girl had yet to know _better_.

Everyone crowded 'round that little girl. Tomoeda was, after all, a small town - my parents were their little celebrities, and I was their cute kid that was all big eyes and all big smiles.

That life went hurtling down the drain with a thunderstorm.

It was a summer storm. The type of storm that had kids creeping under the blankets and weathermen in a fret because no one expected it. The storm that came straight out of a horror movie - what with the flashes of lightning heralding loud thunder.

It was because of that storm (along with a plethora of other things: slippery tires, a busy agenda, brakes that _wouldn't _brake on time and an UN-well placed tree) that my parents died.

My mother had no immediate family, and my father had no past (if he had one, he never spoke of it; kept no photos; nor had much care for them since none of them came to the funeral).

So there I was, a cute little kid that somehow got lost - jumped around from several foster homes because parents wanted little kids that hugged them. Couples wanted kids who didn't have a temper or what classmates whispered in hushed tones, "fists of steel". Kids who emitted an unearthly glow - kids who were popular and _moved on _because their parents were dead and a poor imitation was all that kid was going to get.

Parents could lie all they want about wanting a kid to nourish and love. Reality was easy to understand, though; it was simpler to love a perfect little angel than a too unique, smart-aleck, temperamental brat like me.

Fifteen was the year that I was free, and it was thanks to Konoha Academy - with a 254 acre campus; teachers who either had a Master Degree or Ph. D; and a variety of students that hailed from either the richest families, or had the most promising futures. It was _the _elite boarding school in Japan.

Konoha Academy was also my way out.

A way out of what people _said _my future was going to be ("I mean she's pretty and _smart_, but let's face it, she's not going to get anywhere – people like her rarely get anywhere… She'll most likely marry and stay at home…") Expectation was damning, and I would _never _make anything out of myself being jumped around in stifling families that expected nothing out of me and were just _waiting _for me to get knocked up.

In Konoha Academy, I studied harder than anyone else, trying to pursue whatever bright future I had. There I chased the remnants of a would-be dream, thinking of one thing, college. I had already gotten in Konoha High through a scholarship, and the only way I'd get to college was through another one.

Sixteen was the year that I learned to _breathe_.

It was the year that _everything _I spent the last years working for was _finally _starting to fall together – like a jigsaw puzzle. Yet, inevitably, I would be the one tangled in the golden threads that made my fate, because I would be the one that would pick at it till it fell apart by the seems.

It was the year that Uchiha Itachi came into my life.

* * *

**Author's Note: Yeah, this is just a little project, something that kept bugging me till I _had _to write it down. Anyways, don't know if I'll _keep _it… if you have anything to say, say it through a review.**

**(( Flames will be used to roast marshmallows… ))**


End file.
